Read Online Fragile by Lisa Unger - Free Book Online Page B

looked like nothing, little more than a paper cut, but she couldn’t stop the bleeding. She put her finger in her mouth, tasting the salty sweetness of her blood, a little soap. The offending dish was a piece from the casual dining set they’d received at their wedding, a discontinued line of Royal Doulton stoneware. She wondered how it had chipped.
    “You okay?” asked Jones, coming up behind her.
    “Yeah,” she said, showing him her finger. He lifted it to his mouth and gave it a little kiss. Then he finished loading the dishes in the dishwasher as she pressed a dry napkin against the cut until the bleeding stopped. She wiped the countertop with a tattered old dishrag that needed replacing, passing it quickly over the appliances, too, just like she would have had to do in her mother’s home. Keep on top of the surfaces and your house will always look clean , her mother would say. Upstairs, Ricky’s music had stopped. He’d never come down for dinner, and Jones had told her to leave him alone, let him sulk it out—whatever it was.
    “Maybe we’ll get lucky and Charlene dumped him,” Jones said, starting the dishwasher.
    “Jones.”
    “Well?”
    He poured them each a glass of red wine, the merlot they’d opened last night, and she followed him out to the deck, even though she thought it was too cold to sit outside. She didn’t like to miss their ritual if she could help it. Maybe it was the wine, or the semidark in whichthey sat, but in recent years, this place after dinner was where he was most open, most relaxed. Later, the television would go on and he’d blank out. Maybe she’d sit beside him and watch whatever he had on—usually something on the Discovery or History Channel; he wasn’t into sports, didn’t like other television shows, or even movies for that matter. Or maybe she’d go to bed and read or maybe, if she had a lot of paperwork, back to her office.
    She’d told him about Marshall over dinner, the scene in her office, how he’d appeared across the street. She’d mentioned Travis as well, his new business endeavor.
    “As if anyone in this town would hire Travis Crosby,” said Jones. “You’d have to be the biggest moron alive to bring that guy into your business.”
    Her husband had always disliked Travis, though she remembered that in high school they’d played on the lacrosse team together, been occasional friends. They’d both joined the police department in the same year, Travis staying on the street, Jones moving over to the small detective division and eventually rising to head detective, a post he’d held for ten years.
    Travis had been pulled over on the interstate, driving the wrong way at more than eighty miles an hour, blood alcohol over 0.2, his service revolver exposed on the seat beside him. Had he been in The Hollows, the incident would have been swept aside. But he was unlucky enough to run into a state trooper. It was his third offense in a decade, and this meant mandatory jail time, as well as the loss of his job.
    “I don’t know if that guy is more dangerous on or off the job. But I guess we’ll see soon enough,” said Jones.
    “I’m worried about Marshall.”
    “You do what you can for him, Mags. But keep your distance. You’re his doctor, not his friend. It’s a professional relationship.”
    He was right, but she still bristled at the comment. She quashed the urge to snap at him. You think I don’t know how to keep a professional distance? But after the fight last night, she was weary of angry words. It had started with Ricky about the tattoo, then morphed into something larger between the two of them. It was the old argument about how hewas too hard and she was too easy, how she always took Ricky’s side and he was always the bad guy. Thinking about it, she couldn’t even remember who said what, the memory was just an angry blur, like a landscape seen through the window of a car driving too fast. They’d been up late arguing and finally come